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Marketing in a Down Economy Scarlett Thomas

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In today's economy, being proactive is required to remain at the top of our profession. Orthodontists around the country continue to report reduced case starts and talk of a continued recession is making them even more watchful of this key indicator of practice health.

Even under the best of circumstances, marketing can be a daunting task. Competitive pressures are significant and in many cases this means that you have to do more with less. But in every economic slowdown there are always companies that excel and prosper. They are strategically able to seize market share, reach new customers, and streamline their marketing operations.

Creating a marketing plan tailored to your individual practice can capture potential patients' awareness, stimulate interest and positively impact your case acceptance. Successful practices know the needs of their market and strive to meet those expectations on many levels.

Assign a Marketing Coordinator
Hire someone to work at least one day a week to manage aspects of your marketing program – making deliveries to referring dentists, replenishing game supplies, shopping competitive practices or getting bids for a direct mailing. An energetic stay-at-home mother whose children you treated and who is not shy about touting your accomplishments is a good choice. If you prefer to have staff handle the position, you want them to want the job, so have them apply for it – don't just appoint someone. Select the person who has exhibited the most enthusiasm and creativity for such work and the required administrative skills. Don't, however, expect staff to handle marketing during regular business hours. If you do, they'll fail. Besides, most staff members will value logging the extra hours.

Establish an Annual Marketing Budget
Six percent of total collections should go toward marketing, 10 percent if you plan to do external campaigns – direct mail, radio or cable TV ads, etc. Gross collections of $500,000 translates to a $30,000 to $50,000 annual commitment. Spending from $2,500 to $4,150 monthly keeps the visibility of your practice high. If it's a matter of cash flow for funding, concentrate first on the systems required to finance the effort (e.g.: delinquencies at 3 percent or below, supply budgets in check, finishing treatment on time and staff salaries on target). In addition, put as many patients as possible on automatic payments via credit cards and ensure your recall system is being worked. If your treatment coordinator's (TC) close rate is under 80 percent, address it. Rather than making follow-up phone calls to uncommitted prospective patients, e-mail them asking how to alleviate their concerns. If it's regarding money, people are more likely to address it via e-mail. Perhaps the usual tactics (the ABC credit rating and a third down) may not work in this economy, so consider alternatives. For families you trust, ask for a smaller down payment or break it up over several months and extend payments beyond treatment. Be open to outside patient financing – www.chasehealthadvance.com, among others, offers flexible programs. Offer discounts for account payoffs at year-end when many people need to use monies remaining in their flexible-spending accounts and apply these monies to your marketing efforts the following year.

If, after all of the above systems are operating smoothly and you still feel your cash flow won't support marketing, you may want to consider obtaining a low-interest loan that allows you to generate additional income with increased patient starts while you're making payments.

Know Your Competition
Knowing how other orthodontists in your immediate area market themselves is essential for differentiation and improving your efforts. Have your TC make copies of competitors' quotes from prospective patients and ask staff to collect samples of competitors' Web sites and print ads, and to report movie, radio or TV commercials they notice. Have your marketing coordinator call your primary competitors (at least) annually to "secret shop" them, engaging in the new-patient phone call, receiving the follow-up materials and even undergoing consultations. Tape the phone call and review it at a staff meeting. You'll wince ("I can't believe she put me on hold four times!"), you'll laugh ("Does she know anything about her doctor?"), and if you're lucky, you'll learn a few things you should be doing.

Critique your competitors' new-patient packages to see how yours stacks up against theirs for professionalism and content. If your secret shopper actually goes through a consultation, you can often ascertain fees, treatment philosophies and what types of internal marketing your competitors conduct. If so, use the information to differentiate yourself in the market and during consultations. And when you're done, find someone to secret shop your practice and put yourself through similar scrutiny.

Build Your Marketing Campaign
Every practice should have a yearly marketing plan broken down monthly into internal and external campaigns. Orthodontists focus considerable effort on internal patient appreciation and reward programs to promote patient referrals but often fail to ask for the referral. Here are ways to change that.

Keep small displays in various locations that read, "We want more patients just like you and would appreciate your referral." Hand out cards that offer incentives (a chance to win a large prize; e.g., iPad) for referrals. Check out www.yourtowndirect.com to purchase customizable cards and related materials.

New patients are most excited about treatment at its beginning and at the removal of braces. At these critical moments in treatment, ensure someone is assigned to asking for referrals and handing out referral cards. Practice or role play saying such things as "We enjoy having Johnny here and we'd love to have more patients like him so if you have friends or relatives who would benefit from orthodontics, please give them our name." Clinical assistants who remind patients of how far they've come – pulling up pretreatment photos from time to time – keeps the idea of referrals on patients' minds. Asking for referrals will feel awkward at first but after you do it a few times and see consultation numbers climb, it will get easier.

Call your office, both during and after normal business hours. Confirm your on-hold message system is working as expected. If all lines are engaged or you call after hours, are you being properly transferred to voice mail? Is the quality of the message strong? Are patients able to leave a message? In general, the more ways you can experience your practice from the patient's point of view, the better.

It costs approximately three times as many marketing dollars to attract a new patient than to start an existing one. This is why it makes financial sense to maximize the effectiveness of your marketing efforts with existing patients. Thirty to 40 percent of your marketing budget should be earmarked for established patient marketing. An example is a patient appreciation party. Rent a screen in a movie theater. Invite all your patients, including children to the premiere showing of a movie appropriate for kids. Theaters offer great prizes at premieres, especially for private groups. It can be an investment of time and money, but the dividends will be huge. In addition, you can do pizza parties, summer barbecues, movies at the park, etc.

Assign an employee to stay late one night a week to make calls to all new patients who have not committed to treatment. Offer those patients lower down payments ($300-$500) and I can almost guarantee that you will have at least five more starts per month. Oftentimes when new patients do not commit it is related to the financial arrangements.

Give everyone on your team a clipboard, paper and pen. Summarize the image you're trying to convey to patients. Have the team members go to the parking lot, tell them to close their eyes and that when they open their eyes to imagine they are now entering a practice they have never been to before. Ask each team member to write everything he or she sees that does not fit the image. Sit where patients sit: reception area, patients' restroom. Lie back in treatment chairs and spare nothing from the list. Combine into one master list which becomes the internal to-do list.

Make your team No. 1 and your patients will reap all the benefits. The attitude of one's team is what creates the energy of your office environment. Acknowledge and show appreciation for your staff often; give bonuses when reasonable goals are met; and exercise good communication skills with them, and see how their stress level decreases and their positive attitude increases.

External Marketing
External marketing efforts are often focused on cultivating relationships with local dentists and their staffs. While dental assistants still appreciate muffins in the break room and dentists, their free lunches, surprising the staffs of your top three referring dental offices with something out of the ordinary – chair massages from a handsome male masseuse – are the kinds of things that keep them thinking about which patients would benefit from your services. In addition, send the often overlooked office managers in your referring practices unique birthday gifts – a treat of chocolate-covered strawberries is something they'd likely not buy for themselves. Better yet, have your office manager take the office managers of your referring dentists to lunch individually. You'll learn a lot, even why the referrals from your best source have slacked off recently.

I strongly suggest singling out hygienists for wooing. They're actually in a better position to refer patients than dentists. Hygienists put a high premium on professional skill development so offering CE accredited courses is one of the best ways to earn their respect and loyalty. Have presentations accredited through your state dental association for lecturing at local RDH study clubs and societies. Hygienists also like to be involved in hygiene care prior to and during orthodontic treatment, so collaborating with them during their patients' treatment is a great way to foster their continued allegiance and more referrals.

Create a 30-minute PowerPoint presentation revolving around the top ten services your practice offers. Things like: obtaining perio and cavity clearance on all patients prior to starting treatment, serving bottled water, cookies and popcorn in your practice, always treating the second molars, having digital X-rays in your office, etc. After defining your practice's best qualities, market them to your general dentist by providing a "lunch & learn" and offering them CE credits.

Make sure your Web site speaks effectively for your practice. Hardly a prospective patient today will call your practice without having made judgments based on your Web presence. It is well known that people using search engines will rarely venture past the first or second page of results. This is vital information for orthodontists hoping to attract more patients using their Internet presence. If your Web site is buried three to 10 pages deep in the search results, the practice will receive little, if any value. In addition, often check Web sites search results on Google and Dr. Oggle for written reviews posted by patients. You want to make sure your practice has positive reviews. Encourage your patients to participate in placing reviews by having contests.

Now comes the fun stuff. Think outside the norm. Consider running ads at local theaters or on cable TV. Ads can often be developed through the broadcasting entity in a packaged deal. Get quotes to do a direct mail campaign. Direct mail companies can sort households by zip code, salary, number of adolescent children, etc., and can develop materials that reflect the professional, fun or high-tech nature of your practice. Explore www.yourtowndirect.com for material and services at reasonable rates.

The key to effective external marketing is sustainability. Your target audience will become aware of your message only with repeated exposure, so engage in such activities when you can sustain them for six months at a time. While ads in local newspapers and magazines keep your name in the public eye, direct marketing, if targeted appropriately, has the potential to drive patients directly to your door.

Measure Success
If you can't measure your marketing program, you can't manage it. Establish a routine that your front office staff and treatment coordinator ask prospective patients how they heard about your practice and track the results. At quarter's end, count the prospective patients who responded to each marketing activity versus how many started treatment. You may find that activities bringing in the most calls have poor conversion rates and vice versa. Knowing which ideas work and which don't allows you to modify your plan.

Conclusion
Although marketing is integral to the prosperity of your business, most orthodontists go into practice with little functional knowledge about how to promote themselves or handle consultations satisfactorily. With a budget, game plan and tracking system, you can become as proficient at directing this facet of your practice as any other.

If you are interested in learning more marketing ideas and or creating a marketing game plan for your practice, visit www.orthoconsulting.com. We specialize in monthly Webinars and training services
Author’s Bio
Scarlett Thomas is nationally recognized among orthodontic consultants for providing exceptional, orthodontist practice consulting services. Having been in the dental practice consulting field for more than 23 years, she has excelled in every aspect of building, managing and growing an orthodontic practice. She has lectured nationally for several companies, study clubs and for her own workshops and seminars. She has led round table discussions at the PCSO and has been invited by the AAO and the MASO to lecture at their conferences. Thomas is currently the Vice President of the Southern California Orthodontic Study Club and serves on the Advisory Board of Orthoease. She is also an active member of the National Association of Dental Assistants.
Orthotown Magazine
September 2025
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